Day 83: Swales, plaster preparation and another retaining wall

Steve completed creating 2 swales; one to the east (uphill) of the home and one to the west (downhill). I will plant fruit and nut trees in the downhill sides of the swales. Winter stormwater surface runoff is slowed down, spread out and sunk into the soil by a swale. Soil under a swale will still have water in the drought season after surrounding soil has dried out. This will reduce the amount of irrigation water needed for the fruit and nut trees. The east swale will reduce the amount of surface storm water reaching the home. The west swale will reduce the amount of surface water running off the property from the south yard. Here is a pic of the east swale.

Some of the other tasks started or completed today:

• In preparation for plastering, Joshua cut and installed pieces of diamond mesh metal lath to the exterior of several windows.
• Justin applied weatherproofing to several second story windows
• I applied foam insulation around the interior of several windows
• Alan Dodd of Live Oak Design delivered beautiful doors for the bedroom, bathroom, closet and entry. Alan is also building the kitchen cabinets. All of the wood used is FSC certified.
  
• Erik installed some Cat5 cables and began working on a conduit to run audio wiring from the north to the south side of the family room
  
• Trevor waterproofed the southwest retaining wall we built yesterday
• Trevor built a small retaining wall on the northwest corner of the utility room. The retaining walls were built from leftover pieces of APEX block.
  

Stella status:
She is still getting bigger and about 5 months old,

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Day 19: Electrical preparations and more rebar

Today we completed routing all of the electrical and Cat5 conduits that will be cast into the concrete slab - see pic below. I like having the Cat5 cables in conduits. If technology for wired data in the home changes in the future, I just need to pull new wires through the conduits.

Victor and Fernando from Monterey Bay Rebar were back today to place the concrete slab rebar. Once again, they made the job look easy and finished quickly - see pic below. Three inch thick dobies were placed on the sand to support the rebar approximately at mid height of the 6" thick slab.

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